Published December 15, 2020 at 2:35 PM EST Listen • 28:59 "Exit Music" by Ian Rankin was a pivotal book in his series that features Detective Inspector John Rebus. It was book #17 and Rebus was facing mandatory retirement from the Scottish Police. Thus, the title. Rankin was keeping his options open though. While Rebus is always aging in real time the author was considering ways that he might continue the series and he talked about those potential scenarios during this interview. After this book came out Rankin started a new series that featured Malcolm Fox who worked for The Complaints, the Scottish version of what we would call the Department of Internal Affairs over here. If you are one of the millions of fans of these stories you already know that Rebus came back with his own books again after a brief hiatus and that Malcolm Fox has now become a major character in the Rebus series.